LANSING — Michiganders could resell tickets to sporting events and concerts for more than face value under a bill introduced Tuesday in the state House.

Rep. Tim Kelly, R-Saginaw Township, introduced House Bill 5108 to repeal a 1931 law that prohibits scalping, or selling tickets for more than face value unless granted permission by the venue.

Even though it's illegal, scalping is common practice outside of sports stadiums and concert venues throughout the state. There also are websites like StubHub.com that have contracts with sports teams and venues allowing fans to sell their tickets on the site.

"An individual who buys a ticket to a sporting event or concert owns that ticket, and they should have every right to sell it if they so choose," Kelly said in a statement.

The bill has bipartisan support and would bring Michigan in line with most other states that allow the practice in some form.

Rep. Doug Geiss, D-Taylor, said it's a matter of fairness. He introduced a bill last term that would have limited price markups on ticket websites to up to 10 percent more than face value and also require online resellers to publish the original price of the ticket. That bill never got a committee hearing, so he's now supporting Kelly's proposal.

"As the law currently stands, it doesn't make sense why can I go online and charge somebody $500 for a $50 ticket, but if I sell it in front of a stadium, if I sell it for $51, I can have that ticket confiscated from me," Geiss said.

Legislation introduced last year would have prohibited those kinds of electronic tickets. It also would have banned the use of robotic software, or ticket bots, to quickly purchase large quantities of hot-selling tickets in order to be sold on the secondary market. Neither measure went anywhere.

Officials at Palace Sports and Entertainment are still reviewing Kelly's scalping bill, but spokeswoman Naomi Patton said they "remain a staunch advocate for the rights of the fans and we want to protect them from anyone profiting from deceptive sales practices and scalping."

Decriminalizing scalping could result in more ticket reselling businesses in Michigan. Despite the potential for more competition, San Francisco-StubHub supports the bill.

"There's this gross assumption that when you have this unrestricted ticket sales, that prices go up, but actually the opposite is true," said spokesman Glenn Lehrman. "The more that the marketplace is open, the lower the prices are."

Lehrman said that more than half of the tickets on the site sell for less than face value.